Yet it was not so much the number of miles of severance or the paucity of means of communication that raised walls of oblivion between members of those poorer families which form the large majority of our race; for by 1840—the year when the postal reform was established—communication between even distant places was becoming comparatively easy. Separation was mainly caused by dear postal charges. Fourpence carried a letter 15 miles only; the average rate, even taking into account the many penny letters circulated by the local town-posts—which, it is said, numbered some two hundred, the greater part being very profitable undertakings—was 6-1/4d.[21] Mr Brewin of Cirencester, in his evidence before the Parliamentary Committee of 1838 (Third Report), put the case with startling effect when he said: “Sixpence is a third of a poor man's daily income. If a gentleman whose fortune is a thousand a year, or £3 a day, had to pay one-third of his daily income—a sovereign—for a letter, how often would he write letters of friendship?” But Mr Brewin's illustration, admirable as it is, did not cover the entire case. And, first, it is worth pointing out that the “poor man's daily income” was not only actually smaller, but, generally speaking, it had also smaller purchasing power in the 'thirties than it came to have later in the century when freer trade and lighter taxation prevailed. The real hardship, however, was that too often the man “whose fortune is a thousand a year”—and sometimes much more—was, unlike his poorer brother on 1s. 6d. a day, exempt altogether from postal charges. For the franking system is a hoary iniquity. It dates back considerably more than two hundred years. To such an extent was the practice, legally or illegally, carried, that, as Mr Joyce, in his “History of the Post Office,” tells us: “In Great Britain alone the postage represented by the franked letters, excluding those which were, or which purported to be, 'On His Majesty's Service,' amounted in 1716 to what was, for that time relatively to the total Post Office revenue, the enormous sum of £17,500 a year” (p. 142). By 1838 the number of franked missives was some 7,000,000 a year. Of these, rather less that 5,000,000 were “double” letters, about 2,000,000 eight-fold letters, and some 77,000 thirteen-fold letters, free carriage of which caused a loss to the revenue during the twelvemonths of about £1,065,000.